Maybe they should have just called it "Lincoln's Run."

Rating: 6/10 (26 July 2005)

There's a moment in "The Island" when newly liberated clone Scarlett Johansson sees the original woman she's cloned from in a department store display, complete with a commercial starring her on TV. When she sees herself, it's supposed to be a poignant moment of recognition (well, according to the unsubtle Steve Jablonsky music playing), but since the display is for Calvin Klein - which the gorgeous Scarlett has shilled for in real life (and indeed it's her actual TV ad we see) - it falls short of impact, just coming across as a cheap gag. Plus the client's name is Sara Jordan.
Sara Jordan... Scarlett Johansson... get the idea?
This is, sadly, pretty typical of Michael Bay's first baby steps as a director outside of the Bruckheimerverse; the movie really wants to be a clever science-fiction exercise and a cracking action thriller, but while it's not really a disaster it still falls far short of the "Total Recall"/"Minority Report" league. Maybe it should have had a Philip K. Dick source rather than one by a man whose last major credit was the direct-to-video-in-the-UK Angelina Jolie movie "Beyond Borders"; it's kind of like an inexperienced student trying to tackle a subject far beyond his reach - the movie tries but just doesn't have what it takes.
The script by Caspian Tredwell-Owen and the team of Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci is derivative, for sure (especially "Logan's Run" - for Logan read Lincoln, for Jessica read Jordan, for Carousel read The Island, for the Elders read Sean Bean and the other staff, for Francis read the guy played by Djimon Hounsou, and so on), but what makes "The Island" really a letdown is that from time to time you get glimpses of what this could have been like. Every time Steve Buscemi is on screen it gets some life (until he's killed off, alas), and one wishes he could have been the star rather than Ewan McGregor; the movie also has some interesting ideas in its core when it's not flinging rapidly edited chases at you, and if it had managed to look at all the repercussions of clones it would have hit its high aspirations of being a popcorn movie with ideas.
Unfortunately the shallow characterisation makes that impossible, and "The Island" also sidesteps any potentially plot-crippling moral problems of humans and clones by making Young Obi-Wan's original a jerk (although since he himself admits he's not willing to die any more than the clone is, how does our hero have the moral high ground?) and having the pouting one's source material be in a coma (and be the mother of a young boy, and have her subplot more or less swept under the carpet in a sentence or two near the end). So that's all right then. (Incidentally, one female clone is killed after giving birth to the baby that the original client couldn't have; so artificial insemination doesn't exist at this time? And what about a less expensive form of surrogate motherhood? And if the original can't have children, what makes them think a clone would be any different?)
Always watchable but never exciting or compelling, "The Island" is ultimately not an improvement on Kurtzman & Orci's work on "Alias" and "Xena: Warrior Princess," or even the "Logan's Run" TV series; it doesn't have even Scarlett Johansson in a minidress without a bra. (Dammit.) Michael Bay has yet to be the Robert Zemeckis to Jerry Bruckheimer's Steven Spielberg.